For school safety, ask ALICE; North Ridgeville City Schools tries new lockdown procedure

NORTH RIDGEVILLE — If a gunman enters a school, should teachers and students go into lockdown and wait for help, or evacuate schools if possible and fight back against the intruder?
North Ridgeville City Schools and other local districts are asking these questions and many are leaning toward the latter.
North Ridgeville Middle School principal Amy Peck and Assistant Superintendent of Building Services William Greene have both received training in a lockdown procedure called ALICE, which stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate.
Those are the five principles its proponents believe empower teachers in a crisis situation. Participants learn how to keep lines of communication open, barricade and secure classrooms, attack intruders by using anything they can to throw at them and evacuate buildings when possible.
The intent of a traditional lockdown procedure is to give intruders the impression that no one is in the school — the lights are turned off, doors are locked and students stay away from the windows.
“You’re buying yourself some time until the police can get there,” Greene said.
ALICE training for Greene and Peck began with such a scenario. ALICE instructors began firing air guns and air horns, Peck said, which they could hear getting closer as instructors neared their hiding locations.
“You really do feel like you’re sitting there just waiting to die,” she said. “You feel very, very helpless.”
But after the first scenario, which Greene said left participants feeling as if they were at the mercy of an intruder, helplessness gave way to empowerment as other scenarios showed them how to take control of the situation.
Rather than waiting to see what happens if an intruder enters, Greene said schools can get proactive.
“The more empowerment you have makes you feel more in control of the situation,” he said. “And you don’t want the intruder to have control, you want the staff to be in control. This training gives the staff members the power to do something.”
North Ridgeville plans to move forward with ALICE training for the entire district, which could begin in October or November. The district will host informational meetings for parents and the community as training progresses.
But there are those who don’t think ALICE is a responsible safety measure — especially the idea of counterattacking an intruder.
Ken Trump, a national school security and safety consultant with Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services, said ALICE preys on the fears of anxious parents and educators.
Trump said it only meets the emotional security needs of some educators who are still raw from the Sandy Hook shootings, but it risks creating a false sense of security and skills that could put them at higher-risk for being injured or killed.
He also believes schools are soft-peddling ALICE tactics.
“They know if they came out and told parents they are training their kids in a one-shot workshop, which police train their entire careers to do, to attack gunmen, parents would be rightfully livid,” he said. “So they’re not being fully transparent in most cases.”
Chad Cunningham, a lieutenant with the University of Akron Police Department and the ALICE training instructor who provided training for Greene and Peck, said this is not the case. He said ALICE is about empowering people and giving them options.
“For too many years we have looked at a one-strategy approach,” he said. “And we have found what that one-strategy lockdown approach, without any enhancement, has given us — too many lives being taken.”
Cunnigham said Ohio Attorney General guidelines for school safety, as well as the Department of Homeland Security, suggest using ALICE concepts. The federal government has their own suggested school safety “run, hide, fight” strategy which is similar to ALICE, he added.
But Trump said child psychologists are much quieter on the topic of ALICE, and law enforcement officials who support it are not factoring in things like age, special needs and behavioral issues of students.
Other area districts, including Lorain, Keystone and Westlake, have received ALICE training.
Westlake Superintendant Daniel Keenan said his entire district has been trained in it.
“This really gives us another way to make sure we’re doing what we know best to protect our kids and stay on top of safety,” he said.